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First Light Images From Herschel Satellite Released
davecl writes "The first images from the Herschel satellite have been released by ESA. The images are of the galaxy M51 and show a lot of structure and other features never seen before. Coverage of these results can be found on the ESA website and on the Herschel mission blog. There's a lot of work still to be done on tuning the satellite and instruments for optimum performance, but these very early results already show the promise of this mission. I work on this project and can say that these results are really impressive at this early stage!"
it makes me sad that this seems like frivolous spending in light of the social issues this planet is facing
Hey without this "frivolous spending" there may not be a society to have social issues. Science is about interpreting the physical world which we all depend on for our survival. You never know what improvements to our lives will come from the "frivolous spending". It may even save the planet itself.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
found it: http://www.physorg.com/news161611128.html
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Considering that this image was taken while the main mirrors were still quite warm and not down to operating temperatures, this observatory is going to do great things once fully operational.
Nice to see that at least one slashdot reader really is a rocket scientist!
The best theoretical resolution at 100 microns will be 7.2 arcseconds, limited by the size of the main mirror. Hubble can do 0.05 arcseconds at 0.5 microns (visible light). This may not seem all that impressive, but it about 4 times better than previous far-infrared observatories. And the instruments on-board are significantly more advanced than anything ever used for far-infrared astronomy.
The maximum resolution of a telescope is proportional to the diameter of its objective (main lens or mirror), and inversely proportional to the wavelength at which it's observing. This is observing at wavelengths 100 times longer than the visible and near-IR instruments like Hubble observe, so it's at a 100x disadvantage coming out of the starting gate.
We've never had images anywhere near this good in this part of the spectrum. I'm very sorry that they offend you.
But you're right. We definitely shouldn't field any instruments until we're ready to deliver, power and support an array at Neptune's distance. After all, it's not like we learn anything from intermediate steps. Just look at all the money we wasted, wasted, on Hubble. Or Palomar. Or Galileo's first telescope. (After all, who needed to know that Jupiter had moons, or Saturn had rings?)
Herschel views in far infrared -- 70 to 160 um (micrometers) in TFA example. Here's a Hubble M51 shot in visible light which is sub-micron wavelength. The shorter wavelength permits greater resolution for a given mirror size.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080614.html